SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/6/2015
5:43 PM
My Worship Time Focus: God’s Call
For Judgment
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Amos 3:11-15
Message of the
verses: “11 Therefore, thus says the Lord GOD, "An
enemy, even one surrounding the land, Will pull down your strength from you And
your citadels will be looted." 12
Thus says the LORD, "Just as the shepherd snatches from the lion’s
mouth a couple of legs or a piece of an ear, So will the sons of Israel
dwelling in Samaria be snatched away-With the corner of a bed and the cover of
a couch! 13 “Hear and testify
against the house of Jacob," Declares the Lord GOD, the God of
hosts. 14 “For on the day that I punish Israel’s transgressions, I will also
punish the altars of Bethel; The horns of the altar will be cut off And they
will fall to the ground. 15 “I will also smite the winter house together with
the summer house; The houses of ivory will also perish And the great houses
will come to an end," Declares the LORD.”
As we have been studying the prophets and as they give
warning to the nation of Israel of the upcoming judgment from the Lord, as He
uses the Assyrians to accomplish this we have found out that this happened in
722 BC.
What we see here in these verses is that Amos would
illustrate what would happen to the nation of Israel from his life as a
shepherd. In the Law from Exodus
22:10-13 we read “10 “If a man gives his neighbor a donkey, an ox, a sheep, or
any animal to keep for him, and it dies or is hurt or is driven away while no
one is looking, 11 an oath before the LORD shall be made by the two of them
that he has not laid hands on his neighbor’s property; and its owner shall
accept it, and he shall not make restitution. 12 “But if it is actually stolen
from him, he shall make restitution to its owner. 13 “If it is all torn to pieces, let him bring it as
evidence; he shall not make restitution for what has been torn to pieces.” Amos is saying to the nation of Israel that when
the Assyrian army gets done with the nation of Israel that only a few survivors
will be left over. What will have
happened is seen in Amos 1:2 and 3:8 which is “The lion was about to roar.”
In our study of 2 Kings chapter 17:5 and following we saw
what happened to Israel as the Assyrians killed many of the Israelites and then
took some captive and then returned some to the land, but with other different
people groups and thus there ended up a group of people who were not pure
children of Israel and these were called Samaritans and the Jews rejected
them. In the fourth chapter of the
gospel of John Jesus speaks to a Samaritan woman who comes to believe in Him as
her Messiah and Lord.
We have learned that what happened to the Israelites was
a judgment from the Lord “"For on the day that I punish Israel’s transgressions, I will
also punish the altars of Bethel; The horns of the altar will be cut off And
they will fall to the ground.” God
punished them because of their selfish luxury living and their impudent
idolatry writes Dr. Wiersbe. I am not
saying that being rich is in and of its self sinful but the way that these
leaders were stealing from the poor so that they could be rich was and is still
wrong. Many people today who are
believers that have a lot of money use that money to bring glory to the Lord by
helping the poor and by doing other things that bring glory to the Lord. The children of Israel were not doing this
and that is one of the reasons that God judged them.
The problem with Israel began back when the kingdom was
divided which happened after the end of King Solomon’s reign. King Solomon was a very famous king that the
Lord loved, but he broke every law that the Lord had set up pertaining to how
the king should rule and he spent much tax money in his building programs and
the people of what would become the Northern Kingdom were feed up with it. So the nation of Israel was divided and ten
tribes went to the North and two to the South.
When the king of the Northern Kingdom began that kingdom he set up an
idol so that the people of his kingdom would not go to the city of Jerusalem to
worship the Lord. Many people from the
different tribes of the north moved to the Southern Kingdom because of the
worship in the Northern Kingdom was against the way the Lord had set up to
worship Him. Idol worship then became a
huge problem and eventually was the main reason why God would judge them
through the Assyrians.
Dr. Wiersbe concludes:
“Like Israel of old, nations today measure themselves by their wealth;
and the gross national product becomes the indicator of security and
success. The rich get richer and the
poor get poorer as people worship the golden calf of money and greedily exploit
one another. But it doesn’t take long
for God to wipe out the idols that people worship and the unnecessary luxuries
that control their lives. He hears the
cries of the poor and eventually judges the guilty (see Pss. 10:14; 69:22;
82:3).
“This isn’t the end; Amos has two more messages to
deliver.”
9/6/2015 6:10 PM
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